Belgium makes arrests in corruption probe linked to EU

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BRUSSELS — Belgian federal prosecutors announced Thursday the arrests of several people as part of a corruption probe linked to the European Parliament amid reports in local media that Chinese company Huawei bribed EU lawmakers. The arrests came as an investigation by Le Soir newspaper and other media said lobbyists working for the Chinese telecoms giant are suspected of bribing current or former European Parliament members to promote the company’s commercial policy in Europe. About 100 federal police officers carried out 21 searches in Brussels, the Flanders and Wallonia regions, and Portugal, the federal prosecutor’s office said. The suspects would bemore

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Meta tests ‘Community Notes’ to replace fact-checkers

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SAN FRANCISCO — Social media giant Meta on Thursday announced it would begin testing its new “Community Notes” feature across its platforms on March 18, as it shifts away from third-party fact-checking toward a crowd-sourced approach to content moderation. Meta’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the new system in January as he appeared to align himself with the incoming Trump administration, including naming a Republican as the company’s head of public policy. The change of system came after years of criticism from supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump, among others, that conservative voices were being censored or stifled under the guisemore

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Launch pad problem delays SpaceX flight to replace NASA’s stuck astronauts

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A launch pad problem prompted SpaceX to delay a flight to the International Space Station on Wednesday to replace NASA’s two stuck astronauts. The new crew needs to get to the station so that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams can head home after nine months in orbit. Concerns about a critical hydraulic system arose less than four hours before the Falcon rocket’s planned evening liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. As the countdown clocks ticked down, engineers evaluated the hydraulics used to release one of the two arms clamping the rocket to its support structure. This structuremore

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